Speaker(s): Harriet Harman, Katrine Marçal, Lieutenant Commander Alexandra Pollard, Dr Nicola Rollock | Women in the UK workplace have undoubtedly taken great steps over the past 40 years, but at the current rate of progress it will take 50 years to close the gender pay gap and a child born today will not see equal representation in her lifetime. Our panel discuss the progress that women have made across politics, economics, academia and the armed forces, but also what obstacles remain to be overcome and what can be done to challenge the barriers that prevent women progressing. Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) was elected as Labour MP for Peckham in 1982. Joining a House of Commons which was 97% male, she had three children while in Parliament. She has been politics' most prominent champion for women's rights, introducing the National Childcare Strategy, the Equality Act and changing the law on domestic violence. She was the first woman to represent the Labour Party at Prime Minister's Questions. Her memoir A Woman's Work is published in February 2017. Katrine Marçal (@katrinemarcal) is a columnist for Swedish paper Aftonbladet where she writes articles on Swedish and international politics, economics and feminism. and author of Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? which was shortlisted for The August Prize and won the Lagercrantzen Award. Alexandra Pollard is a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy, having joined in 1997. She has had a varied and challenging career, mostly at sea, since passing out from Britannia Royal Naval College. In 2014, she became the Executive Officer and Second in Command in HMS RICHMOND, joining her in the South Atlantic and then deploying for 9 months in 2015 to the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean to support counter narcotics operations. During the final months of this deployment RICHMOND was re-tasked to support the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean as part of the multi-national Operation SOPHIA which saw her taking the role of On Scene Commander in the rescue of 3000 migrants by 7 different ships. Now employed within the Naval Personnel area, she is conducting a short period as a Career Manager for Warfare Officers before returning to sea in 2017 in Command of HMS NORTHUMBERLAND. Nicola Rollock (@NicolaRollock) is Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in Race Education at the University of Birmingham. She is interested in improving the ways in which we commonly think about racism and in identifying solutions to persistent race inequalities within the education system and the workplace. Nicola is Editor of the journal Whiteness Education and lead author of the award-winning book The Colour of Class: the educational strategies of the Black middle classes. She is a trustee of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), which works to support and improve educational research across the UK and, is a Patron of the Equality Challenge Unit’s Race Equality Charter, which is aimed at improving the experiences and success of faculty and students of colour. Nicola was selected, in 2015, as a Woman of Achievement by the Women of the Year Council and was included in the 2014 Powerlist of Britain’s most influential Black people. Alison Rankin Frost is a communications strategist specialising in brand and reputation resilience. She is a lay Governor of LSE.